The Digital Game Research Association now has a Chinese branch. In April the inaugural event of Chinese DiGRA took place at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. This event – the ‘(Chinese) Game Studies Conference’ – attracted scholars with an interest in developing game research on Chinese games and gaming cultures from all over the Chinese-speaking world as well as from Europe and North America. The conference began with a PhD consortium led by Espen Aarseth, involving candidates working in Europe, Hong Kong and mainland China. The two day conference took in papers running the gamut of Chinese game studies, including work on the history of digital games in China, Chinese gaming cultures, and discourses around Chinese games.
The conference’s two keynotes set the tone for the development of Chinese game studies. Espen Aarseth (ITU Copenhagen) reflected on the establishment and development of game studies as an academic field, and Gino Yu (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) gave a fascinating review of the development of digital games in China.
The event marked the launch of Chinese DiGRA, an effort on the one hand to develop DiGRA as a truly international organisation and on the other to give game scholars working in and on China a research network, to support teaching and PhD development in the region, and to disseminate and promote Chinese game scholarship around the world.
We would welcome anyone who is interested to subscribe to the Chinese DiGRA mailing list, which you can do here. Our website is currently a bit bare but we are working on it and it will soon have information on getting involved in Chinese DiGRA, upcoming events, projects and other news. In the meantime please feel free to contact me with any inquiries or comments on the initiative.
电子游戏研究协会现在有中国分会了！Chinese Digra成立于2014年4月在宁波诺丁汉大学举行的“中国游戏研究会议”上(http://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/events/2014/(chinese)-game-studies-conference-call-for-participation.aspx)。这次国际会议吸引了有志于在中国和中华文化区推广游戏研究和游戏文化研究的研究者。与会的研究者们包括港澳台和大陆学者、以及欧洲和美洲的研究者。此次会议首日为博士生论坛，由游戏研究的领军学者Espen Arseth进行指导，参会的博士生则来自欧洲、香港和中国大陆。“中国游戏研究会议”为期两天。会议主题涵盖了中国电子游戏的历史、中国游戏文化，以及围绕着中国游戏的一系列问题。
本次会议的两个主题演讲为中国游戏研究的发展奠定了极好的基调。来自哥本哈根信息技术大学的Espen Arseth教授回溯并反思了游戏研究作为一个学术领域的建立历程，香港理工大学的Gino Yu教授则讲述了中国的电子游戏发展历程。
这次会议中，秉持着使电子游戏研究协会向更国际化的方向发展的目的，为专注于中国的游戏研究者们提供更好的学术交流网络，为了向本区域的教学与博士培养提供支持，以及为了更好地向世界传播中国游戏研究界的声音，Chinese DiGRA(中国电子游戏研究协会)得以成立。
我们欢迎社会各界人士订阅Chinese DiGRA的邮件列表，请点这里。我们的网站目前内容还不丰富，但我们会逐步完善，补充Chinese DiGRA接下来的活动、项目和其他信息。有任何问题，欢迎留言。